Muscle building is a huge and important subject for many guys. After all, who wouldn’t like to get ripped?
Unfortunately, this also means that it’s a BIG market and lots of people are trying to exploit that. For example, there’s no end to muscle and fitness magazines and of course there’s also tons of muscle-building related products.
The problem is that misinformation is often spread because of commercial interest. Who cares if a new supplement is worthless? Just spread some rumors and have some articles published in fitness mags, that make your new supplement look like the best thing since sliced bread…
On the other hand, there’s alos lots of very good advice out there. Only: Which is which? How can you tell the good from the bad muscle building tips?
While I can’t possibly cover all the bases: Here’s my humble collection of the best and worst advice out there:
Great Muscle Building Tips:
- Rest is Just as Important as Working Out
Any guide or article that emphasizes the importance of rest is on the right track. Sure, hitting the weights is the crucial component to building muscle mass, but becoming over-zealous and working out too often or for too long can be very counter-productive. Always make sure that your resting periods are long enough for your muscles to fully recover from a workout and go into hypertrophy.
- - Muscles Are Made in the Kitchen and the Gym
Nutrition… no one’s a big fan of the nutrition-aspect of muscle building, are they? We all wish we could just hit the gym regularly and eat whatever and still end up with a dream-body, but unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. If you really want to maximize your results, you need a very good nutritional foundation; there’s no way around that.
- - Full-Body Routines and Exercises
I don’t mean to suggest that isolation exercises are all wrong. However, workouts based solely around isolation exercises are to be treated with some skepticism. Working out muscles independantly from each other has some benefits and many drawbacks and if you don’t include at least some full-body components to your routine, it can even be a health issue…
Worst Muscle Building Tips
- “Ultimate Exercise”
Any guide, routine or program that focuses on one particular exercise or one particular machine is getting it wrong. To avoid plateauing with your progress, switching up routines and exercises from time to time is essential. Even the best exercise in the world will become ineffective if you never do anything else.
- - Supplement-Focused Advice
Yes, there are a few supplements that can really aid you in building muscle mass. Most of the supplements are, however, nothing but money-makers for the producers. More importantly, no pill or shake in the world will do the hard work for you. You can become muscular without any supplements at all, but you’ll never get muscular without the right workout and nutrition, no matter what supplements you gobble down. Any advice that strongly advertises particular supplements belongs in the bin.
- - Local Fat-Burning
This must be the worst one of them all: So much fitness-equipment is sold on the premise that it can help you burn fat in specific areas of your body, it boggles the mind. No matter how many crunches you do, it will never help burn more belly fat! If you want to burn fat, prepare to change your diet and do some cardio. It’s a long, hard road in most cases, but at least it will get you there.
- - High-Volume Training
This may be a controversial one, but I suggest that high-volume exercises are NOT for “normal people”. Unless you’re a genetic freak, pumped up to your eyeballs with hormones and who-knows-what, doing 5 sets each of 7 exercises for your chest is a very bad idea. I know there’s a lot of debate on the point of volume vs. intensity, but no matter which side you’re on, you have to draw the line somewhere, when it comes to volume…
These are just a few good and bad muscle building tips. I’ll be expanding the article in the future, as I come across more advice.
While there are probably more people out there who are desperately trying to lose weight and struggling with excess pounds, being perpetually skinny can be extremely frustrating as well.
Vince Delmonte from 
Having a six-pack of abs is pretty much the pinnacle of fitness. The six-pack is what being fit, muscular and ripped is all about and in many ways, ripped abs represent fitness as a whole. Pretty much anyone you see in a gym wants to have ripped abs (although few have achieved that goal).
There’s a huge myth that is being perpetuated by many people in the fitness industry and that myth is that punctual, local fat-burning is possible.